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CHAPTER II
OUR ABORIGINES-THE IROQUOIS, OR SIX NATIONS-INDIAN TOWNS, VILLAGES, GRAVEYARDS, CUSTOMS, DRESS, HUTS, MEDICINES, DOCTORS, BARK-PEELERS, BURIALS, ETC.
AQUANUSCHIONI, or " united people," is what they called themselves. The French called them the Iroquois; the English, the Six Nations. They formed a confederate nation, and as such were the most celebrated and power- ful of all the Indian nations in North America. The confederacy consisted of the Mohawks, the fire-striking people; the Oneidas, the pipe-makers; the Onondagas, the hill-top people; the Cayugas, the people from the lake ; the Tuscaroras, unwilling to be with other people; and the Senecas, the mountaineers.
The aborigines were called Indians because Columbus thought he had discovered India, and they were called Red Men because they daubed their faces and bodies with red paint.
The Iroquois, or Six Nations, were divided into what might be called eight families,-viz., the Wolf, Bear, Beaver, Turtle, Deer, Snipe, Heron, and Hawk. Each of the Six Nations had one of each of these families in their tribe, and all the members of that family, no matter how wide apart or of what other tribe, were considered as brothers and sisters, and were forbidden to marry in their own family. Then a Wolf was a brother to all other Wolves in each of the nations. This family bond was taught from infancy and enforced by public opinion.
" If at any time there appeared a tendency toward conflict between the different tribes, it was instantly checked by the thought that, if persisted in, the hand of the Turtle must be lifted against his brother Turtle, the toma- hawk of the Beaver might be buried in the brain of his kinsman Beaver. And so potent was the feeling that, for at least two hundred years, and until the power of the league was broken by the overwhelming outside force of the whites, there was no serious dissension between the tribes of the Iroquois.
" In peace, all power was confined to ' sachems ;' in war, to ' chiefs.' The sachems of each tribe acted as its rulers in the few matters which required the exercise of civil authority. The same rulers also met in council to direct the affairs of the confederacy. There were fifty in all, of whom the Mohawks
NOTE .- For much in this chapter I am indebted to Rupp's History.
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had nine, the Oneidas nine, the Onondagas fourteen, the Cayugas ten, and the Senecas eight. These numbers, however, did not give proportionate power in the councils of the league, for all the nations were equal there. There was in each tribe, too, the same number of war-chiefs as sachems, and these had absolute authority in time of war. When a council assembled, each sachem had a war-chief near him to execute his orders. But in the war-party the war-chief commanded and the sachem took his place in the ranks. This was the system in its simplicity.
" The right of heirship, as among many other of the North America tribes of Indians, was in the female line. A man's heirs were his brother, -- that is to say, his mother's son and his sister's son,-never his own son, nor his brother's son. The few articles which constituted an Indian's personal property-even his bow and tomahawk-never descended to the son of him who had wielded them. Titles, so far as they were hereditary at all, followed the same law of descent. The child also followed the clan and tribe of the mother. The object was evidently to secure greater certainty that the heir would be of the blood of his deceased kinsman. The result of the application of this rule to the Iroquois system of clans was that if a particular sachemship or chieftaincy was once established in a certain clan of a certain tribe, in that clan and tribe it was expected to remain forever. Exactly how it was filled when it became vacant is a matter of some doubt; but, as near as can be learned, the new official was elected by the warriors of the clan, and was then inaugurated by the council of the sachems.
" If, for instance, a sachemship belonging to the Wolf clan of the Seneca tribe became vacant, it could only be filled by some one of the Wolf clan of the Seneca tribe. A clan council was called, and, as a general rule, the heir of the deceased was chosen to his place,-to wit, one of his brothers, reckoning only on the mother's side, or one of his sister's sons, or even some more dis- tant male relative in the female line. But there was no positive law, and the warriors might discard all these and elect some one entirely unconnected with the deceased, though, as before stated, he must be one of the same clan and tribe. While there was no unchangeable custom compelling the clan council to select one of the heirs of the deceased as his successor, yet the tendency was so strong in that direction that an infant was frequently chosen, a guar- dian being appointed to perform the functions of the office till the youth should reach the proper age to do so. All offices were held for life, unless the incum- bent was solemnly deposed by a council, an event which very seldom occurred. Notwithstanding the modified system of hereditary power in vogue, the con- stitution of every tribe was essentially republican. Warriors, old men, and women attended the various councils and made their influence felt. Neither in the government of the confederacy nor of the tribes was there any such thing as tyranny over the people, though there was a great deal of tyranny by the league over conquered nations. In fact, there was very little government
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of any kind, and very little need of any. There was substantially no property interests to guard, all land being in common, and each man's personal prop- erty being limited to a bow, a tomahawk, and a few deer-skins. Liquor had not yet lent its disturbing influence, and few quarrels were to be traced to the influence of women, for the American Indian is singularly free from the warmer passions.
" His principal vice is an easily aroused and unlimited hatred; but the tribes were so small and enemies so convenient that there was no difficulty in gratifying this feeling (and attaining to the rank of a warrior) outside of his own nation. The consequence was that although the war-parties of the Iro- quois were continually shedding the blood of their foes, there was very little quarrelling at home.
" Their religious creed was limited to a somewhat vague belief in the existence of a Great Spirit and several inferior but very potent evil spirits. They had a few simple ceremonies, consisting largely of dances, one called the 'green-corn dance,' performed at the time indicated by its name, and others at other seasons of the year. From a very early date their most impor- tant religious ceremony has been the 'burning of the white dog,' when an unfortunate canine of the requisite color is sacrificed by one of the chiefs. To this day the pagans among them still perform this rite.
" In common with their fellow-savages on this continent, the Iroquois have been termed ' fast friends and bitter enemies.' Events have proved, how- ever, that they were a great deal stronger enemies than friends. Revenge was the ruling passion of their nature, and cruelty was their abiding characteristic. Revenge and cruelty are the worst attributes of human nature, and it is idle to talk of the goodness of men who roasted their captives at the stake. All Indians were faithful to their own tribes, and the Iroquois were faithful to their confederacy; but outside of these limits their friendship could not be counted on, and treachery was always to be apprehended in dealing with them.
" In their family relations they were not harsh to their children and not wantonly so to their wives ; but the men were invariably indolent, and all labor was contemptuously abandoned to their weaker sex.
" Polygamy, too, was practised, though in what might be called mod- eration. Chiefs and eminent warriors usually had two or three wives, rarely more. They could be discarded at will by their husbands, but the latter seldom availed themselves of their privilege.
" Our nation-the Senecas-was the most numerous and comprised the greatest warriors of the Iroquois confederacy. Their great chiefs, Corn- planter and Guyasutha, are prominently connected with the traditions of the head-waters of the Allegheny, Western New York, and Northwestern Penn- sylvania. In person the Senecas were slender, middle-sized, handsome, and straight. The squaws were short, not handsome, and clumsy. The skin was reddish brown, hair straight and jet-black.
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" After the death of a Seneca, the corpse was dressed in a new blanket or petticoat, with the face and clothes painted red. The body was then laid on a skin in the middle of the hut. The war and hunting implements of the deceased were then piled up around the body. In the evening after sunset, and in the morning before daylight, the squaws and relations assembled around the corpse to mourn. This was daily repeated until interment. The graves were dug by old squaws, as the young squaws abhorred this kind of labor. Before they had hatchets and other tools, they used to line the inside of the grave with the bark of trees, and when the corpse was let down they placed some pieces of wood across, which were again covered with bark, and then the earth thrown in, to fill up the grave. But afterwards they usually placed three boards, not nailed together, over the grave, in such a manner that the corpse lay between them. A fourth board was placed as a cover, and then the grave was filled up with earth. Now and then a proper coffin was procured.
" At an early period they used to put a tobacco-pouch, knife, tinder-box, tobacco and pipe, bow and arrows, gun, powder and shot, skins and cloth for clothes, paint, a small bag of Indian corn or dried bilberries, sometimes the kettle, hatchet, and other furniture of the deceased, into the grave, sup- posing that the departed spirits would have the same wants and occupation in the land of souls. But this custom was nearly wholly abolished among the Delawares and Iroquois about the middle of the last century. At the burial not a man shed a tear ; they deemed it a shame for a man to weep. But, on the other hand, the women set up a dreadful howl." They carried their dead a long way sometimes for burial.
THE ORIGINAL BARK-PEELERS
An Indian hut was built in this manner. Trees were peeled abounding in sap, usually the linn. When the trees were cut down the bark was peeled with the tomahawk and its handle. They peeled from the top of the tree to the butt. The bark for hut-building was cut into pieces of six or eight feet ; these pieces were then dried and flattened by laying heavy stones upon them. The frame of a bark hut was made by driving poles into the ground, and the poles were strengthened by cross-beams. This frame was then covered inside and outside with this prepared linn-wood bark, fastened with leather-wood bark or hickory withes. The roof ran upon a ridge, and was covered in the same manner as the frame; and an opening was left in it for the smoke to escape, and one on the side of the frame for a door.
HOW THE INDIAN BUILT LOG HUTS IN HIS TOWN OR VILLAGE
They cut logs fifteen feet long and laid these logs upon each other, at each end they drove posts in the ground and tied these posts together at the top with hickory withes or moose bark. In this way they erected a wall of logs
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fifteen feet long to the height of four feet. In this same way they raised a wall opposite to this one about twelve feet away. In the centre of each end of this log frame they drove forks into the ground, a strong pole was then laid upon these forks, extending from end to end, and from these log walls they set up poles for rafters to the centre pole; on these rafters they tied poles for sheeting, and the hut was then covered or shingled with linn- wood bark. This bark was peeled from the tree, commencing at the top,
Captain George Smoke and his cousin John Smoke, who stood for this picture as a special favor for the author. They are Seneca Indians dressed and equipped as the Senecas of Northwestern Pennsylvania four hundred years ago
with a tomahawk. The bark-strips in this way were sometimes thirty feet long and usually six inches wide. These strips were cut as desired for roofing.
At each end of the hut they set up split lumber, leaving an open space at each end for a door-way, at which a bear-skin hung. A stick leaning against the outside of this skin meant that the door was locked. At the top of the hut, in place of a chimney, they left an open place. The fires were made in the inside of the hut, and the smoke escaped through this open space. For bedding they had linn-wood bark covered with bear-skins. Open places between logs the squaws stopped with moss gathered from old logs.
There was no door, no windows, and no chimney. Several families occu- pied a hut, hence they built them long. Other Indian nations erected smaller
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huts, and the families lived separate. The men wore a blanket and went bare- headed. The women wore a petticoat, fastened about the hips, extending a little below the knees.
Our nation, the Senecas, produced the greatest orators, and more of them than any other. Cornplanter, Red Jacket, and Farmer's Brother were all Senecas. Red Jacket once, in enumerating the woes of the Senecas, exclaimed, --
" We stand on a small island in the bosom of the great waters. We are encircled, we are encompassed. The evil spirit rides on the blast, and the waters are disturbed. They rise, they press upon us, and the waters once settled over us, we disappear forever. Who then lives to mourn us? None. What marks our extinction? Nothing. We are mingled with the common elements."
The following is an extract from an address delivered by Cornplanter to General Washington in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1790:
" FATHER,-When you kindled your thirteen fires separately the wise men assembled at them told us that you were all brothers, the children of one Great Father, who regarded the red people as his children. They called us brothers, and invited us to his protection. They told us he resided beyond the great waters where the sun first rises, and he was a king whose power no people could resist, and that his goodness was as bright as the sun. What they said went to our hearts. We accepted the invitations and promised to obey him. What the Seneca nation promises they faithfully perform. When you refused obedience to that king he commanded us to assist his beloved men in making you sober. In obeying him we did no more than yourselves had bid us promise. We were deceived; but your people, teaching us to confide in that king, had helped to deceive us, and we now appeal to your breast. Is all the blame ours?
" You told us you could crush us to nothing, and you demanded from us a great country as the price of that peace which you had offered us, as if our want of strength had destroyed our rights."
" Drunkenness, after the whites were dealing with them, was a common vice. It was not confined, as it is at this day among the whites, principally to the ' strong-minded,' the male sex ; but the Indian female, as well as the male, was infatuated alike with the love of strong drink; for neither of them knew bounds to their desire: they drank while they had whiskey or could swallow it down. Drunkenness was a vice, though attended with many serious conse- quences, nay, murder and death, that was not punishable among them. It was a fashionable vice. Fornication, adultery, stealing, lying, and cheating. principally the offspring of drunkenness, were considered as heinous and scandalous offences, and were punished in various ways.
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" The Delawares and Iroquois married early in life; the men usually at eighteen and the women at fourteen; but they never married near relations. If an Indian man wished to marry he sent a present, consisting of blankets, cloth, linen, and occasionally a few belts of wampum, to the nearest relations of the person he had fixed upon. If he that made the present, and the present pleased, the matter was formally proposed to the girl, and if the answer was affirmatively given, the bride was conducted to the bridegroom's dwelling without any further ceremony; but if the other party chose to decline the proposal, they returned the present by way of a friendly negative.
" After the marriage, the present made by the suitor was divided among the friends of the young wife. These returned the civility by a present of Indian corn, beans, kettles, baskets, hatchets, etc., brought in solemn pro- cession into the hut of the new married couple. The latter commonly lodged in a friend's house till they could erect a dwelling of their own.
" As soon as a child was born, it was laid upon a board or straight piece of bark covered with moss and wrapped up in a skin or piece of cloth, and
Indians moving
when the mother was engaged in her housework this rude cradle or bed was hung to a peg or branch of a tree. Their children they educated to fit them to get through the world as did their fathers. They instructed them in re- ligion, etc. They believed that Manitou, their God, 'the good spirit,' could be propitiated by sacrifices; hence they observed a great many superstitious and idolatrous ceremonies. At their general and solemn sacrifices the oldest men performed the offices of priests, but in private parties each man brought a sacrifice, and offered it himself as priest. Instead of a temple they fitted up a large dwelling-house for the purpose.
" When they travelled or went on a journey they manifested much care- lessness about the weather ; yet, in their prayers, they usually begged 'for a
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clear and pleasant sky.' They generally provided themselves with Indian meal, which they either ate dry, mixed with sugar and water, or boiled into a kind of mush; for they never took bread made of Indian corn for a long journey, because in summer it would spoil in three or four days and be unfit for use. As to meat, that they took as they went.
" If in their travels they had occasion to pass a deep river, on arriving at it they set about it immediately and built a canoe by taking a long piece of bark of proportionate breadth, to which they gave the proper form by fastening it to ribs of light wood, bent so as to suit the occasion. If a large canoe was required, several pieces of bark were carefully sewed together. If the voyage was expected to be long, many Indians carried everything they wanted for their night's lodging with them,-namely, some slender poles and rush-mats, or birch-bark."
When at home they had their amusements. Their favorite one was dancing. " The common dance was held either in a large house or in an open field around a fire. In dancing they formed a circle, and always had a leader, to whom the whole company attended. The men went before, and the women closed the circle. The latter danced with great decency and as if they were engaged in the most serious business; while thus engaged they never spoke a word to the men, much less joked with them, which would have injured their character.
" Another kind of dance was only attended by men. Each rose in his turn, and danced with great agility and boldness, extolling their own or their forefathers' great deeds in a song, to which all beat time, by a monotonous, rough note, which was given out with great vehemence at the commencement of each bar.
" The war-dance, which was always held either before or after a cam- paign, was dreadful to behold. None took part in it but the warriors them- selves. They appeared armed, as if going to battle. One carried his gun or hatchet, another a long knife, the third a tomahawk, the fourth a large club, or they all appeared armed with tomahawks. These they brandished in the air, to show how they intended to treat their enemies. They affected such an air of anger and fury on this occasion that it made a spectator shudder to behold them. A chief led the dance, and sang the warlike deeds of himself or his ancestors. At the end of every celebrated feat of valor he wielded his tomahawk with all his might against a post fixed in the ground. He was then followed by the rest ; each finished his round by a blow against the post. Then they danced all together ; and this was the most frightful scene. They affected the most horrible and dreadful gestures; threatened to beat, cut, and stab each other. They were, however, amazingly dexterous in avoiding the threat- ened danger. To complete the horror of the scene, they howled as dreadfully as if in actual fight, so that they appeared as raving madmen. During the dance they sometimes sounded a kind of fife, made of reed, which had a shrill
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and disagreeable note. The Iroquois used the war-dance even in times of peace, with a view to celebrate the deeds of their heroic chiefs in a solemn manner.
" The Indians, as well as 'all human flesh,' were heirs of disease. The most common were pleurisy, weakness and pains in the stomach and breast, consumption, diarrhea, rheumatism, bloody flux, inflammatory fevers, and occasionally the small-pox made dreadful ravages among them. Their gen- eral remedy for all disorders, small or great, was a sweat. For this purpose they had in every town an oven, situated at some distance from the dwellings, built of stakes and boards, covered with sods, or dug in the side of a hill, and heated with some red-hot stones. Into this the patient crept naked, and in a short time was thrown into profuse perspiration. As soon as the patient felt himself too hot he crept out, and immediately plunged himself into a river or some cold water, where he continued about thirty seconds, and then went again into the oven. After having performed this operation three times successively, he smoked his pipe with composure, and in many cases a cure was completely effected.
" In some places they had ovens constructed large enough to receive sev- eral persons. Some chose to pour water now and then upon the heated stones, to increase the steam and promote more profuse perspiration. Many Indians in perfect health made it a practice of going into the oven once or twice a week to renew their strength and spirits. Some pretended by this operation to prepare themselves for a business which requires mature deliberation and artifice. If the sweating did not remove the disorder, other means were applied. Many of the Indians believed that medicines had no efficacy unless administered by a professed physician; enough of professed doctors could be found ; many of both sexes professed to be doctors.
" Indian doctors never applied medicines without accompanying them with mysterious ceremonies, to make their effect appear supernatural. The ceremonies were various. Many breathed upon the sick; they averred their breath was wholesome. In addition to this, they spurted a certain liquor made of herbs out of their mouth over the patient's whole body, distorting their features and roaring dreadfully. In some instances physicians crept into the oven, where they sweat, howled, roared, and now and then grinned horribly at their patients, who had been laid before the opening, and frequently felt the pulse of the patient. Then pronounced sentence, and foretold either recovery or death. On one occasion a Moravian missionary was present, who says, 'An Indian physician had put on a large bear-skin, so that his arms were covered with the forelegs, his feet with the hind legs, and his head was en- tirely concealed in the bear's head, with the addition of glass eyes. He came in this attire with a calabash in his hand, accompanied by a great crowd of people, into the patient's hut, singing and dancing, when he grasped a handful of hot ashes, and scattering them into the air, with a horrid noise, approached
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the patient, and began to play several legerdemain tricks with small bits of wood, by which he pretended to be able to restore him to health.'
" The common people believed that by rattling the calabash the physician had power to make the spirits discover the cause of the disease, and even evade the malice of the evil spirit who occasioned it.
" Their materia medica, or the remedies used in curing diseases, were such as rattlesnake-root, the skins of rattlesnakes dried and pulverized, thorny ash, toothache-tree, tulip-tree, dogwood, wild laurel, sassafras, Canada shrubby elder, poison-ash, wintergreen, liverwort, Virginia poke, jalap, sarsaparilla, Canadian sanicle, scabians or devil's-bit, bloodwort, cuckoo pint, ginseng, and a few others.
" Wars among the Indians were always carried on with the greatest fury, and lasted much longer than they do now among them. The offensive weapons were, before the whites came among them, bows, arrows, and clubs. The latter were made of the hardest kind of wood, from two to three feet long and very heavy, with a large round knob at one end. Their weapon of defence was a shield, made of the tough hide of a buffalo, on the convex side of which they received the arrows and darts of the enemy. But about the middle of the last century this was all laid aside by the Delawares and Iro- quois, though they used to a later period bows, arrows, and clubs of war. The clubs they used were pointed with nails and pieces of iron, when used at all. Guns were measurably substituted for all these. The hatchet and long- knife was used, as well as the guns. The army of these nations consisted of all their young men, including boys of fifteen years old. They had their cap- tains and subordinate officers. Their captains would be called among them commanders or generals. The requisite qualifications for this station were prudence, cunning, resolution, bravery, undauntedness, and previous good fortune in some fight or battle.
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